


Offerings

by alidiabin



Category: Mad Men
Genre: 1980s, Female Friendship, Gen, Post Season-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 18:37:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4490394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alidiabin/pseuds/alidiabin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>February 1981, Joan and Peggy celebrate Joan's 50th birthday. Both have difficult home lives. The world is changing, and Joan offers Peggy a job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Offerings

**February 1981**

Peggy frowned as she checked her watch, Joan was late. The elegant restaurant was busy, filled with boozy business men having lunch. Peggy, despite being in the corporate world for two decades now, still felt like a nervous secretary, though as she entered her fourth decade she was gawked at even less than before.  Men did not appreciate Irene Dunn anymore, besides Peggy would much rather be appreciated for her brain than her beauty. Peggy wondered why on earth, Joan would want them to celebrate her grand entrance in to her fifth decade in such a place. She caught a glimpse of the menu, and realised the expensive sounding food had attracted Joan. Despite, Joan’s sultry exterior, piles of money, and business brain, sometimes she still felt like the secretary whom men like the patrons of the restaurant would never take seriously.

Joan finally arrived, still looking glamorous, perfectly polished, without even a speck of silver in her red hair.   Peggy could not help but smirk at her business suit, how the Joan Holloway she had first met would be so disgusted by its boyish cut, even if was in ruby red. Joan placed kisses on Peggy’s cheek, without as much as a smudge to her lipstick.

“Sorry,” she whispered, Peggy waited for an excuse to slip from Joan’s lips and their perfect lipstick. A torrid tale of a toyboy lover would get her through the rest of her pointless day, in her office at McCann Erickson. “Kevin was in the Principals office, he takes after his father.”

Peggy wanted to say which one, but held off, even after twenty years, her and Joan’s friendship was still and exercise in careful diplomacy, which much remaining unsaid. Despite, the careful words, serious judgement never entered into it, both respected the choices of the other. She had always wondered, if Kevin knew, he had seemed desperately sad at Rogers’s funeral a few years prior.

“How is Stan? And Lauren, she is in first grade now isn’t she?” Joan asked as she scanned the menu, for which lunch option would be kindest to her hips, and tried to desperately distract herself from her wayward teenage son, and the new age she had reached.

Peggy nodded awkwardly, she and Stan had separated amicably enough a few weeks after they watched the New Year fireworks. It had been brewing for at least a year; both had realised that their ambitions were different. Peggy was upset that she was stagnating in her career, despite all the work she had put in. Stan, who had left advertising not long after their daughter entered the mix, and taught Art at a community college, calling McCann Erickson toxic. Their daughter, indeed in first grade, lived mostly with Stan, because he was actually home in the evenings.

Peggy knew it was for the best though there was still the near constant guilt that stewed in her stomach, and kept her up into the early hours. Katherine and Anita, did nothing to soothe it. Anita’s still wanted to punish Peggy for the baby she had not raised, especially as she found herself raising her granddaughter, a product of her eldest son’s prom night.  Her marriage to Stan, and Lauren had extended the olive branch to the elder more conservative Olson’s, even if they judged the way she was holding it.

There was also a heartfelt letter sitting in her seldom opened kitchen drawer, from a man who had been born Thanksgiving 1960, was looking for his birth mother. That had been put in the far too hard basket, and was most certainly not going to be discussed with Joan.

“Good, Lauren wants to be an astronaut,” Peggy muttered, as she thought of the school project she had helped her on last weekend, while she sketched copy, because Stan professed to being too stoned to remember the moon landings. “Should, I even ask about Kevin?”

With puberty, Kevin had changed. While, with the success of his mother’s business he wanted for nothing, he was still starting fights, making outrageous statements, and getting much acquainted with his high school Principal’s temper. Joan wondered where it had all gone wrong. Gail had all but given up on the two of them, moving to Florida, and never stay more than a week in New York. Joan, hardly blamed her.

“Ask me about my other baby?” Joan whispered, wanting to talk about something good, they were celebrating her birthday after all.

“How is Holloway-Harris?” Peggy asked, glad that the conversation had turned upwards.

“It needs you,” Joan said, offering her a job for the third time in just over a decade. She had offered her a stake in the company as it started up, but it was not Peggy’s baby, and like her own daughter she preferred them more developed, with more character.

Joan had offered her a job again, when Peggy had been pregnant, talking about flexible working arrangements, and family time. Something that had been all talk, Joan worked into the early morning, and was still making up for missed little league games, and school plays. Peggy had thought about it, for a good few days, but with all the uncertainty and anxiety the baby brought up, she thought it best not to rock the boat too much. Plus, Stan mentioned, he would actually like to enjoy her company in the evening.

Joan’s third pitch, talked about career progression, being in charge, and controlling her own destiny. There was also promises of the possibility of becoming a junior partner. Peggy waited for her brain to formulate a rebuff, for her mouth to form a no, or even the pacifying I will think about it, which would be followed by a fraught phone call a week later. It was always so much easier to say no to Joan when you did not have to face her.  Instead she felt her lips, slip into a smile, and utter a word she never expected.

“Yes,” she whispered, halfway through the pitch. Joan’s face slipped into an easy smile, her laugher lines growing. Peggy raised her glass, Joan’s glass met hers.

“To the future,” Joan whispered. “But there is absolutely no way, you are putting the bizarre octopus painting up in your new office,”

Peggy smirked, deciding they could negotiate on that later.

**Author's Note:**

> I. I do not own anything included in this fanfic.   
> II. Lauren Olson-Rizzo year of birth 1975  
> III. Irene Dunn, was who Don described Peggy as during the Marilyn vs. Jackie thing.   
> IV. Sorry, that this is un-betaed.


End file.
